Want to become a CFO? This skill will make you a desirable candidate

Good morning. Yesterday, I shared new data on the path from CFO to CEO. But if you’re trying to land a CFO role, here is some advice from hiring executives that give you an advantage.

“Our clients place great value on CFO candidates with P&L experience,” Scott W. Simmons, co-managing partner of executive search firm Crist Kolder Associates, told me. “I believe this goes hand-in-hand with the years-long trend of companies placing higher value on operational finance skills over other areas when it comes to CFO candidates.”

The role of managing profit and loss (P&L) requires handling the increases and decreases in revenue and costs, and having a holistic understanding of the organization and expenses. Therefore, Simmons explained, it's critical to understand how a company generates capital and where it spends that capital—and how to ensure sure there’s more money coming in than out.

“Owning a P&L is viewed as highly valuable because it affords a deeper understanding and broader perspective of what makes a business run,” Simmons said. Not all CFO candidates have this on their resumes. If you want P&L experience, you have to be intentional about it.

Saori Casey, who served almost 13 years as VP of finance at Apple, is now the new CFO at Sonos, a developer and manufacturer of wireless, portable speakers and home sound systems. I recently asked Casey, who starts at Sonos on Monday, if there was a particular part of her experience that has prepared her to become a CFO for the first time.

“Most recently, I helped manage Apple’s total company P&L—working closely with the CEO and the CFO and contributed to scaling the company from approximately $65 billion to nearly $400 billion in revenue,” Casey told me.

But she also has experience with investor relations and engaging with board members from having worked side-by-side with R&D, sales, and operations.

Another example of a finance chief who first “owned the P&L” is Coca-Cola Company’s CFO John Murphy, according to Simmons. Joining the company in 1988, Murphy was named CFO in 2019 and president in 2022. From 2016 to 2018, he served as president of the multinational beverage giant’s Asia Pacific group responsible for operations in the group’s five business units, and before that, two other divisional president roles. “Prior to being named CFO, [Murphy] had three successive P&L roles in Asia Pacific, South Latin America, and Central Latin America,” Simmons said. Ranking No. 100 on the Fortune 500, Coca-Cola had $43 billion in revenues in 2022.

Crist Kolder’s new Volatility Report, based on data through Dec. 31, provides additional insight about the path to the CFO chair. Of the current sitting CFOs in the combined Fortune 500 and S&P 500, 24% were finance chiefs at another company before taking on the role, 19% were corporate finance executives, 13% were corporate controllers or chief accounting officers, and 9% were divisional presidents.

Another finding is the number of sitting CFOs with an MBA continues to outpace those with a CPA. In 2023, 52.5% of sitting CFOs had an MBA compared to 38.5% with the CPA credential, according to the report. And 13.7% had both an MBA and CPA credential.

CFOs predict: We're still in the first month of 2024, so I'm continuing to share predictions from CFOs on how the role of a finance chief will evolve. Here's one more:

"Today's financial leaders are responsible for driving enterprise-wide strategy, focused on the long-term success of the business versus solely year-over-year performance. This is only going to accelerate in 2024. More than ever before, CFOs are key strategic partners to the rest of the C-suite, partnering closely with our peers to create and execute strategies that protect and preserve capital but also allow us to identify new value-creation opportunities and deploy resources against them. The finance function is no longer siloed—we regularly partner with other teams." —Tricia Tolivar, CFO at Cava, a Mediterranean fast casual restaurant chain

Have a good weekend.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com